A lot of things have happened in the past few days concerning Zeta, BeOS, and Haiku. In order to create some order in the chaos, Eugenia and I have created a rough timeline of what happened the past 6-7 years. Read on for the timeline and some more thoughts on the matter. Update:Magnusoft ceases distribution of Zeta. Update II: Access answered the questions posed in the article.

Starting afresh with Haiku looks like the better option, and Magnussoft could find some way of commercialising it if they were interested and up to the job.

Well, if Access & Magnussoft worked out a licensing agreement then Zeta would no longer be illegal *and* both these companies could benefit financially (earn profit). I'm sure Magnussoft took a loss in the development of Zeta (so parted ways with Bernd) & Access lost out on licensing fees for all Zeta versions. Might as well get something out of it. (I doubt Bernd would challenge Access, since he isn't providing proof of his right to make & distribute Zeta).

Also, whatever happened to individual choice? Shouldn't each person decide for themselves if they want to buy Zeta or not. I'm happy you've made up your mind Vibe, but everybody has to decide for themselves what they prefer to do.

And, it is doubtful that Magnussoft could make updates to Zeta. Why? Because Bernd would have the source code to Zeta/BeOS. You think he'd give this to Magnussoft? Magnussoft would only have the binaries, so they could only create new applications / programs & update most libraries (which come from open source), but wouldn't be able to "fix" the OS itself (get rid of bugs, make OS improvements, etc). I *feel* very certain that Bernd (& his developers) have the source code & *not* Magnussoft, but can't say for sure. And even *if* Magnussoft had the source, they wouldn't develop it without the consent of Access, because they follow the legal system.

PS Instead of 10-20% of profit, they should just rework the agreement with taking out Bernd & replacing it with Access (Maybe Bernd was getting 50% of profit? or less, because Magnussoft paid for the development costs?). I'm sure they could figure something out.